I see no reason why we won’t so long as we follow a similar approach.

Its a credit not to the project management process but to the team of talented and committed individuals involved in project delivery – the Customer Experience team, the design agency, the Amazon developers and advisers, our external testing team and more.

The approach basically boiled down to:

1 – having a committed team of  talented people from across different organisations, empowered to work together and JFDI in order to get their areas of work completed to time and quality, and supported by myself and others to quickly resolve any blockages where needed. Its amazing what empowerment can do for motivation.

2 – top-down planning – a simple high level plan (more like a road map) with key milestone dates supported by more detailed plans for certain activities and deliverables where needed. Plans that the whole team understood and bought into, with dates they signed up to and were willing to go for.

3 – a good set of working relationships across the teams, lots of open communication – phone calls, face to face meetings, etc – and people being prepared to give and take around their roles and responsibilities, being flexible where needed to get the job done. Jobsworths were frowned upon – if someone had the time to do it, or it made more sense for them to do it because of their background knowledge, they got on with it and did it if it resulted in a better quality product or us remaining on track.

4 – everyone wanting success – Everyone wanted to deliver the project on time and within every team, people worked ridiculous hours, weekends and so on if it meant we kept on track. It probably helped that with each new milestone, I reminded the team responsible that we were on track to date (green) and that they might not want to be the one to turn us amber.

Fear of failure also does wonders for motivation!

So what did I personally do?

1 – Fortunately I have what I think are very good working relationships with the others in the  “project management team” – both the head of CX and the Amazon Dev manager. Between us, we helped keep the project on track by reaching decisions quickly, being pragmatic and having open, regular communication.

Having good relationships with each of them helped me to try and build trust between the different organisations, reducing the pressure on teams from others and giving them a little flexibility and space to get their work done.

2 – I kept my nose out of the detail unless necessary to keep the project on track. We had people on point for certain deliverables or milestones and the extent of my involvement was to get weekly status updates from them and have chats with them on an ad hoc basis to get a feel of how things were going. But I also encouraged them to raise things with me quickly if they had a blockage that needed clearing.

3 – I pulled together a high level plan (more like a road map really) and ensured that everyone involved bought into it. Once work was underway on one set of deliverables I let the teams get on with it and looked ahead to the next set, ensuring we were ready for work to kick off, again looking for risks and issues and working to remove blockages in advance of when work was due to start.

4 – I kept asking myself what could go wrong with a certain milestone or set of activity, and then worked to guard against it. Whether it meant getting more closely involved, producing a detailed plan with the team concerned, chewing it over with the management team, whatever.

5 – I talked a lot. I played diplomat in encouraging  individuals to trust, I played referee in disputes between organisations, I played taskmaster when it came to getting work completed on time, I played leader where needed to motivate the team and help them see the way forward and I played watchful observer when someone else stepped forward to sort something out.

In many respects I felt more like a sports coach than a project manager – prepare and empower the team and let them get on with playing while I look ahead to the next game – with a focus not on winning just the game but on winning the competition.

So roll on phase 2 – it might not be green all the way but we will deliver on time! Let’s JFDI, team.

Placing more importance on the process than on the outcome.

I’d rather be called a “project delivery manager” – where the focus is more around ensuring the project gets delivered on time, on budget and to the appropriate level of quality for the customer than on producing a hefty report each week to explain why the project is late, exactly which line in the 1000 line project plan we are up to and how we are 67.56% complete against plan).

And I must be doing something right because my project is one of the few that has been green since it started – and will hopefully still be green when it goes live next Friday. And any projects I’ve delivered in the past have usually also been green.

So what’s the secret?

Well, I mentioned to someone a few weeks ago that for me, successful project management is primarily about managing people and relationships in order to get the job done, not about managing detailed processes or creating loads of paperwork to show what we are doing. And about using your brain and judgement. About ensuring lots of good communication, managing conflicts, unclearing blockages and doing practical things to maintain project momentum.

Relationships

Build healthy relationships with both stakeholders and suppliers and ensure open, transparent and regular discussions from day one. Good, effective, open communication is absolutely crucial.

Build an atmosphere of trust – to the point where they both trust you and each other to do the right thing even when they aren’t clear themselves what it might be. Remember, all 3 have an interest in the project being delivered – work together, not against each other.

Be prepared for conflict, as it will happen – but deal with it quickly and effectively and don’t let tensions build up across this important senior team.

Teamwork and empowerment

Have a clear vision and scope for the project, supported by a high level plan showing only the milestones and deliverables, and ensure the entire project team understands and buys into it all. The whole team has to understand the project vision and scope, and feel the project is achievable (“our project”). If anyone doesn’t, encourage discussion around it and work to gain their support.

Give team members responsibility for appropriate deliverables and milestones (or entire workstreams) and leave them to get on with doing it. Don’t micromanage – instead, empower these smart people to get the job done and get short, regular status updates from them on progress.

If things start to look like they are going off track or risks and issues start appearing, that’s the time to step in. If things are ticking along fine, leave them alone to get on with it.

If a milestone looks tight, suggest they produce a detailed plan to build up to it, and keep an eye on progress against it.

Encourage a team atmosphere where collaboration replaces directives, where trust replaces the need for back covering and where flexibility and teamwork replaces jobsworth behaviours.

Risk and Issue Management

As project delivery manager, this is the area I tend to focus on most. I am always looking ahead across the high level plan, checking for any potential bottlenecks or problems that may be looming and then working in advance to remove them. At a previous employer, some of the team used to call me “the plumber” for this reason – I was forever removing blockages so that projects could maintain momentum.

If issues come up, bring the relevant people together quickly to sort them out. And don’t stop until you have an agreed way forward to resolve them. Time is critical where an issue is concerned or a decision needs to be made – otherwise, things quickly grind to a halt and team morale dives.

If risks are identified, quickly discuss and agree actions to mitigate. Never have an open risk on the risk register without an owner or mitigating actions for it.

And don’t just look for project risks and issues, also watch for dependencies with other projects or wider things going on (holidays, mandatory departmental meetings) that could affect the delivery of your project.

The key is speed – don’t sit back while time ticks on, identify issues and risks and deal with them quickly.

Communication

Like many, I hate email. There is way too much of it. And I particularly hate emailing / being emailed by people in the same office as me. If it can’t wait and you think you might forget the point you wish to make, send it. Otherwise, wait until a time when you can have a face to face conversation about it. Or even a phone call. Face to face / phone helps build relationships – misinterpreted emails often help destroy them.

Have weekly meetings with the team – what have you done since the last meeting, what are you planning to do before the next one, and what issues do you need to table. Add any new risks and issues to the risk and issues register.

Minimal project management documentation

The main ones I feel are beneficial to project delivery are as follows:

- project charter – in my view, the most important one for the project as it sets out the vision, scope, milestones, deliverables, key risks, dependencies, delivery approach, roles and responsibilities.

- high level project plan, showing deliverables, milestones and key tasks only. It doesn’t go into too much detail – if you need it, create separate detailed plans for the team to work against. The purpose of the high level plan is to provide a general guide on project progress and an indication of upcoming activities, not to specify in detail what tasks need doing and by when. ie. it’s not a workplan.

- project budget – keep it simple, summarised and up to date. But don’t overanalyse it.

- status reports – again, keep them short, simple and to the point. If you truly know the status of your project, if your high level plan is up to date and if everyone is in agreement on status, risks and issues, producing this should take less than ten minutes each time.

- risk and issue register – the things on here are those that can really derail your project so keep on top of them and follow through to resolution.

The most important thing is to focus on delivery, not process. Don’t document a failing project, deliver it effectively and hopefully it will never become one.

When browsing for it, I accidentally discovered another “change” website. This one is change.org, calling itself a “social action network”.

The great thing about these two sites, beyond the excellent causes and issues they discuss, is the fact that the information flow is most definitely two-way. These sites are excellent examples of using web 2 tools for social change.

And not only are conversations and debates taking place among the site hosts and their visitors but in fact the sites themselves are also examples of what I would call “web theatre”.

By web theatre, I mean the following. It’s a well researched fact that the majority of visitors to web 2 – type sites (social networks, social tagging, microblogging and so on) tend to lurk rather than participate. That the participation by the “masses” is actually participation by “the few, watched by the masses”.

Clever site hosts can make the most of this level of participation to further communicate their messages to the masses, and this is what is being done in an excellent way by these two sites, especially change.gov.

Instead of pushing their messages blindly without allowing for open debate to take place on their turf (hence driving it to blogs etc where they have less influence) or when it does, simply ignoring it, the Obama team are sharing their ideas and plans and openly encouraging feedback, whether positive or not.

And responding to it. That’s the key to the “theatre” bit – performing with the few participants for the mass of lurkers.

On top of discussions and digg-like voting, they are also sharing information about the meetings they are having with outside groups. Even to the point of sharing agendas, presentations and so on. (Have a look at the “Your seat at the Table” section of the site).

If a new government can do this, imagine the opportunities available to other organisations. Greater collaboration with staff, customers, their community of visitors, greater participation in driving their agendas, greater transparency…. imagine.

And imagine how worried the boards of various multinationals must be.

He sums up the dilemma currently facing organisations.

He suggests that work = fun when you are able to choose where, when and how to work and you have the right organisational structures and toolsets (mostly web 2.0 tools) in place to support that choice. And when you have challenging problems to solve and can work collaboratively with whoever you need to work with to get the job done, and share common goals and achievements.

The crucial point about this is that the new generation of workers (“net-geners”) coming through expect that type of working environment to be the norm. Organisations that don’t sit up and take notice of the needs of their future workforce, which have or are growing up with the web, are going to find challenging times ahead.

From the article:

It’s a case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. The net-geners arrive at work, eager to use their social networking tools to collaborate and create and contribute to the organisation. However, they are shocked to find technological tools more primitive than the ones used in school. The organisation still thinks the net is about websites presenting information, rather than a Web 2.0 collaboration platform. Then the organisation bans Facebook at the office because it suspects net-geners are chatting with friends and throwing digital snowballs when they should be working – thus depriving net-geners of their link to friends, to fun, to colleagues. Pretty soon, they head for the exit.

His article was inspiring.